For this series we have asked former campers to share something about their experiences auditioning for schools. If you have a story you’d like to share, .
Author Archives: johnhowrey
Why Should You Consider Doing a Musical Revue with your students?
by Ginger Morris
TAP Camp Director
Freelance Director/Choreographer/Educator/Manager
A revue is a type of multi-act theatrical entertainment that uses any combination of music, dance and sketches. When I create a revue, it is typically songs and dances from musicals strung together by a theme.
Are you struggling to produce a big musical every year or is there pressure to start doing musicals at your school? Here are a few reasons to consider producing a musical revue.
1. Role Distribution
In a musical, you have to cast people based not only on talent, but on “fitting a role.” You have to have the right people placed in the right places and often you sacrifice the talents of certain students for the personality or physicality of another. When you do a revue, you can cast as many people as can fit on your stage and it doesn’t matter if they fit a role. You can create a show around the students you have and you can showcase their individual talents.
2. Cost Effective
You don’t need a set or intense costumes. You can ask the students to wear something that ties them all together and looks uniform in nature but you don’t need to go through the trouble of renting, begging, borrowing or making costumes. As far as a set goes, you don’t need any scenery. If you want to get fancy, you can use a slideshow or just a backdrop, but if you have a cyclorama, just throw up a new color for each number and you are good to go!
3. Great training for future musicals (chorus and principals)
In a musical, often the same kids get the leads each year and the same kids stay in the chorus. There are probably some diamonds in the rough hanging out in the chorus who just need a little encouragement and need a little moment to shine before they are ready for a big role. So many times, I’ve given a short solo or duet to someone in a revue (who was not ready to play a leading role), and after having that experience, were ready to play a lead the following year. Also, you are training your chorus to be a better chorus and training your musical leads to be better chorus members. The more song and dance numbers you put in your show, the better your students will be in future musicals.
4. Team building
Unlike a full musical, there are no leads in a revue. It is up to you to distribute the solos however you like, so you may allow for more equal distribution and your students can feel like they are contributing to the final product as a team and not as leads and a chorus. If you already do a musical each year, this is a great way to get everyone on the same footing and working as a team before you work on the musical and things feel more divided.
5. Simple SchedulingYou can divide the students in so many ways based on dance ability, or vocal ability or age and you can schedule rehearsals in a way that is simple, only rehearsing one number at a time. You can wait until the week of the show to put all the separate groups together.
6. Introduce various styles and eras
When you choose a musical, you are choosing one style to introduce the students to. If you do Oklahoma!, you are learning the music of Rogers and Hammerstein and the dance style of classic American theatre. In a musical revue, you can do songs from a variety of shows. You can introduce songs from musicals that you couldn’t actually do at your school. You can do songs from Cole Porter’s Anything Goes and songs from In The Heights all in the same hour-long revue.
I have been organizing and directing musical revues for the last 15 years. It is a wonderful way to introduce a variety of songs and dances to a large group of kids in a fun ensemble style environment. Check back in a few weeks and I will give examples of revues I have produced with some pointers on producing your own.
Musical Theatre History Reading List, Part One: The Videos
I really enjoy reading about musical theatre history. At first I thought I was just a junkie for useless trivia, but it has become abundantly clear how useful this information actually is. So, I’m start a little set of resources for MT junkies like me. Over the course of a couple of posts I’m going to take you on a brief journey of my library. Just a few notes on some of what I consider to be the best or most useful books on the subject.
We’re going to start with videos. Mainly ‘cuz it’s a really easy list to make. And I do think it’s important to “see” what we’re talking about sometimes. The first few a some simple must-haves. You just gotta own these videos and watch them at least once a year. Then, I thought it might be useful to have a list of what videos of productions are available for “official” purchase. Obviously, a quick Amazon search will pull these up, but some may be a little hidden in the list.
As always, leave a comment and let me know what you think. Have I made some major errors? Something left off? Let me know and I’ll correct the mistake!
Reading List: Part One
The Videos
Broadway: The American Musical
The PBS Documentary
Obviously, this is an awesome place to start. A textbook-like documentary taking us from the very beginnings of musical theatre to now. It’s enthralling to see some of the footage, but it always leaves me wanting more. But, if you’re looking for a way to fill a long weekend, you couldn’t do much better than this. Amazon Link
Broadway: The Golden Age
from the amazon.com review: It’s not a comprehensive survey of the American musical theater, but Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There is an invaluable and moving salute to the art form composed of interviews with the people who were there in the 1940s through the 1960s. There are too many to list, but they include John Raitt, Angela Lansbury, Hume Cronyn, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Carol Channing, Jerry Orbach, Robert Goulet, Robert Morse (even he’s gotten old!), Jerry Herman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim, and Harold Prince. There are also some rare performance clips, such as Ethel Merman in Gypsy, Patricia Morison in Kiss Me Kate, and Angela Lansbury in Mame, as well as more familiar television performances, but very few film versions (for either authenticity or rights reasons). Director Rick McKay’s focus, however, is on evocative stills, a few too many shots of the city, and most of all the words from the stars themselves. Fact is, because Broadway shows are a live performance medium, there simply isn’t a lot of footage available, which is why it’s a treat – no, it’s an obligation – that we hear the stories from the people themselves. It’s the best way the form will survive. After a bit of a slow start, the interviews cover the culture of Broadway, hanging out at Walgreen’s and Sardi’s, taking a show on the road, and thoughts about the current generation. (Broadway in this case refers to the location in New York rather than the musical-theater genre, so non-musicals are a major part of the discussion.) Broadway: The Golden Age had a limited theatrical run in 2004, and there will be inevitable comparisons to Broadway: The American Musical, the six-hour series that played on PBS in the fall of that same year. The PBS series is much longer (especially counting the DVDs’ bonus interviews) and unlike The Golden Age, it attempts to be a comprehensive survey of 100 years of American musical theater. The ambition is admirable, but often hard to live up to. The Golden Age offers more rare footage, and a more powerful sense of nostalgia throughout the interviews. On the downside, there’s no real structure to the film other than grouping the interviews by random subject, and director McKay relies too much on his own personal experiences as a jumping-off point. But it’s a worthwhile, often passionate film that captures a priceless glimpse at a way of life as lived by so many memorable figures whose like will never be seen again. –David Horiuchi Amazon Link
The Best of Broadway Musical: Original Cast Performances from The Ed Sullivan Show
There aren’t many opportunities to experience the original productions of West Side Story, Hello Dolly or My Fair Lady. (There weren’t YouTube bootlegs at the time…) This DVD is just spectacular. Amazon Link
Broadway’s Lost Treasures
from the amazon.com review of Volume 1
Broadway’s Lost Treasures delivers what the title promises: 21 historic performances of great moments in American musical theater televised on the Tony Awards between 1967 and 1986. (Five were not included when the program was broadcast on PBS in 2003.) Unlike some other arts, theater has rarely been well-documented, so it’s a treat to see these numbers performed by the original artists rather than experience them through audio recordings or tepid movie adaptations. Sure, sound and picture quality are only adequate, some of the numbers are minimally staged and some appear to be lip-synched, and some of the performances that do have excellent film counterparts (Yul Brynner in The King and I, Robert Preston in The Music Man, Joel Grey in Cabaret) seem rather lackluster here. But those are minor drawbacks compared to the chance to see Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera perform “All That Jazz” and “Nowadays” from Chicago, or John Raitt, a stage legend who’s woefully underrepresented on film, singing The Pajama Game’s “Hey There.” The most electrifying excerpt is from Evita, anchored by the powerhouse trio of Patti LuPone, Mandy Patinkin, and Bob Gunton, the most surprising is Julie Andrews singing “Send in the Clowns” (she wasn’t in the cast of A Little Night Music), and the most touching is a 12-year-old Andrea McArdle breaking hearts in Annie’s “Tomorrow.” An indispensable record of a quintessential American art form. –David Horiuchi
Amazon Link: Part One
Amazon Link: Part Two
Amazon Link: Part Three
Amazon Link: The Plays
Full Productions on Official Video
Sweeney Todd (Lansbury and Hearn)
Into the Woods
Sunday in the Park With George
Passion
Sweeney Todd (in Concert)
Follies in Concert
Company (John Doyle production)
Putting It Together
Candide (with Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone)
Les Mis 25th Anniversary Concert
Pippin
Oklahoma!
Chess in Concert
Victor/Victoria
Cats
Peter Pan (Rigby)
Fosse
Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall
Kiss Me Kate
Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical
Camelot with Richard Harris
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Rent
Sondheim: The Birthday Concert
What's up with Christian Fleming?
One of TAP’s bright stars has been Christian Fleming. We were so lucky to have this guy join us for TAP and am thrilled to have news of his journeys in college. Here’s a note from him:
College Auditions: Zach Teague
For this series we have asked former campers to share something about their experiences auditioning for schools. If you have a story you’d like to share, .
AHHH YES. The “dreaded” college auditions.
But, coming to TAP strips you of this fear. Going into the process I was completely naïve! At TAP you will become so comfortable with the audition process even if it was actually quite scary before. Of course, you are nervous, but you are sooooo prepared.
At TAP we were told how to schedule auditions, how to impress the audition panel, what to say…what NOT to say.…so on and so forth. It’s actually freaking me out a bit…“Where would I be if I hadn’t went to TAP camp?” I would not be sure of myself. That’s what TAP does, instills confidence into you, that you did not have before. What’s also amazing is that the faculty won’t give up on you. THEY WILL LITERALLY DIG INTO YOUR SOUL TO HELP YOU FIND THAT CHARACTER.…that love for the song.…the hip movement for the dance! I’ve now been accepted to Elon, Otterbein, NYU, Roosevelt and Emerson for Music Theatre. (Waitlisted to Carnegie Mellon and CCM. OH WELL)
Thanks to this amazing camp…I wouldn’t have survived without Ginger, David, Michael, Travis, Alan, Aaron or any of the other faculty.
Oh and they let you know.…denies are not the end of the world. It just means you’re meant to be somewhere else. TAP Camp Summer of 2010 will live on forever in my memory ! 🙂
–Zach Teague
(photo courtesy of Zach’s Facebook profile)
Video: Cross the Line TAP 2008 Senior Showcase
135 Questions with... Claire Augustine
Every so often we will bombard former camper, faculty or staff members with our pile of 135 questions. We’ll edit down their responses and post them here, picking the best answers. We like to check in with each other every so often and thought you’d enjoy it as well. (btw, wanna make it 136? Let us know if you wanna add some questions and we’ll see what we can do…)
What is your full name?
Claire Elizabeth Augustine
What was the opening number of your first TAP showcase?
Heart and Music
What is one place you would love to visit right now?
Paris, France
Which coffee flavor are you?
Cinnamon Dolce
Recommend a book/play/musical/poem/movie that has changed your life.
Book: The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron
Play: Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
Poem: “Us” by Anne Sexton
Movie: Harold and Maude
Do you know anyone famous?
I feel I know people who grew up to be kind of famous, like Nathan Parsons who’s now on General Hospital. Devyn Ray just starred in an independent movie, Blacktino, that just premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. That kind of thing keeps happening. They were right when we were training at places like TAP Camp. So many of my teachers told me that we would be the future generation of the art community. You don’t really believe that as a kid, but as you get older, that really comes true.
What’s your favorite color?
Grey
If you could meet any living person, who would it be?
Probably Twyla Tharp, because she’s so serious about her art.
What’s the last piece of live performance you attended as an audience member?
The Merce Cunningham Company when it stopped in Austin. I was going to school in Columbus, Ohio, where the Legacy Tour started. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that they were stopping in Austin. Now I’m determined to see the last performance in New York at New Years. Tickets are only $10!
What was your favorite TAP activity?
This may sound weird, but the one afternoon we had all the staff sit and answer questions from the campers. I love hearing people’s backstories and I was so incredibly curious how artists became artists as a kid. Back then I thought there was a set path to success, but now I know that’s really not true. But I really tried hard to get it out of people when I was younger.
What’s the furthest you’ve ever traveled?
Scotland.
Are you stubborn?
Oh yes.
What project are you working on currently?
About to perform Transitional Spaces III for Ellen Bartel at the New Works Festival at UT, and in May will be in Ariel Dance Theatre’s The Grand Theory of Everything Between. Very excited about both of these shows!
Where did you go to college?
Otterbein College (now named Otterbein University) in Westerville, Ohio. I got two BAs, English (Creative Writing) and Choreography.
135 Questions with... Coy Branscum
Every so often we will bombard former camper, faculty or staff members with our pile of 135 questions. We’ll edit down their responses and post them here, picking the best answers. We like to check in with each other every so often and thought you’d enjoy it as well. (btw, wanna make it 136? Let us know if you wanna add some questions and we’ll see what we can do…)
What is your full name?
Coy Gee Branscum II
Where were you born?
Dallas, Texas
What’s the first thing you remember about TAP?
Calling Ginger (I got lost..) and hearing her answer the phone with “You can’t call me here…hahaha….but really. Kidding!”
What was the opening number of your first TAP showcase?
Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof
When was the last time you laughed really hard?
Today with Ginger, Travis and Koske at One Act rehearsal…
What are you excited for?
TAP CAMP 2011 😀
What’s your mood right now?
Exhausted..
Do you wish you were somewhere else right now?
Yes. My bed. 🙂
What is one place you would love to visit right now?
NYC (good luck trying not to sing.)
Do you know anyone named Dan?
Why yes I do. He was in a couple shows with me in Wimberley.
Are you tired?
As previously stated, yes… Exhausted.
What are you about to do?
Slink onto the couch and watch a new episode of Castle, the best TV show ever.
Which coffee flavor are you?
Mocha. Is that a coffee..? That’s what I purchase at coffee shops…
Which popular sitcom character are you closest to?
All of them, I see a bit of myself in all the characters I watch. Which I guess is why I watch the shows in the first place.
Where’s the beef?
In the stew.
What do you consider to be the greatest invention?
Sliced bread. Kidding, but my real answer would have to be the internet.
Recommend a book/play/musical/poem/movie that has changed your life.
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. Read the play and the book for the musical production and buy the CD. Envelop yourself in the essence of this incredible show.
Do you know anyone famous?
Yes, I’m related to LeAnn Womack (but we’ve never met).
Red Sox or Yankees?
Yankees… because of Damn Yankees. That’s my connection. Haha, I know nothing of sports land..
What’s your favorite color?
Green.
Tenors or baritones?
TENORS ALL THE WAY! HEY-OHHH!
Do you do any impressions?
Yes. I’m totes good at Barbara Streisand and Judy Garland.. I’m working on Liza…
If you could meet any living person, who would it be?
I have a list, but let’s go with Julie Andrews. She taught me to sing. “Do, a dear…”
If you could meet a character from fiction, who would it be?
Harry Potter. That’s like… not even a question.
What’s the last piece of live performance you attended as an audience member?
Liza’s concert in Austin.
What was your favorite TAP activity?
Hmm.. if we’re talking Iron Tap – spam cook off. Tap camp in general would be going to see shows with everyone. Dressing up and a night of theatre? Yes, please.
How many 1st cousins do you have?
I don’t know… I don’t want to think that hard…
Which has been your happiest moment in life?
Getting into college.
If told that this is your last day on earth, how would you spend it?
Doing whatever my sweet, lil heart desired…
Name one quality that you absolutely adore in your friends.
Their ability to make me smile when I don’t want to.
What makes you laugh?
Sarcasm. Funny stuff.
Where do you feel most at home?
In rehearsals.
Hamburger or hot dog?
Hamburger. When you eat a hot dog, you eat just about every body part imaginable. Repulsing.
Who was/were your roommate/s at TAP?
Dylan, Manny and Ryan. We had the best room… No question.
Who has been the biggest influence in your career/studies?
Ginger Morris! 😀 No joke, changed my life…
Have you talked to a complete jerk today?
Not a complete jerk…
What did you do last night?
Rehearsed, made a video project where I baked stuff then watched the DVD of the Footloose production I was in.
If you could pack up and move would you?
Yes. I am actually… I have to with college and what not.
What’s the furthest you’ve ever traveled?
I went to Chicago! Amazing city.
Did you enjoy your weekend?
Yes, it was a beautiful weekend… Filled with hopelessness, hopefulness, joy and depression all at the same time.
Are you stubborn?
No! (Haha, get it? I really am stubborn.. It’s a joke.)
Who else is in the room with you?
My mom and dad.
In winter, would you rather wear jackets or hoodies?
Hoodies. 🙂 They’re so comfortable.. and they have HOODS.
What’s the longest you’ve ever spent in a car?
I drove to Florida one time.
What project are you working on currently?
I’m assistant directing Picnic for the high school’s One Act Play and I’m also assistant directing Once on This Island at the middle school. I’ve also got to work on my Senior Portfolio and my Senior Project… There is a lot.
With whom have you had the most successful professional collaboration?
Hmm.. I don’t know. I work with Ginger really well?
Where did you go to college?
I will be attending Millikin University in the fall. 🙂
If you could add one question to this list of questions, what would it be?
If you could be any animal, what would you be?
TAP Filmmaking...
The amazing Katie McDowell created this awesome little promo… enjoy!!
College Auditions: Coy Branscum
This is the first of a series of posts where TAP campers share their experience with the college audition process. If you have a story you’d like to share,
Coy is one of the TAP campers, prepping for his last year with us and his first year at college. He will going to Millikin University this fall as a BFA Musical Theatre Major. Congrats, Coy! Fabulous photo courtesy of Coy’s Facebook profile.
Auditioning for colleges can feel terrifying. It’s easy, as I found out, to become overwhelmed and feel like you won’t succeed. But the actual process is incredibly fun. The representatives from each college want you to do well, they’re looking for potential students for their program!
While I feel you shouldn’t see college auditions as daunting, that doesn’t mean you don’t have to try. You really have to focus on your monologue and song selection. It’s a bit difficult because you need to watch each program’s audition requirements (although they’re all pretty standard). The feeling you get from a successful audition is worth all the effort you put in to make it happen.
The biggest part is pushing through your fears. I’m not a dancer necessarily and it’s easy for me to feel discouraged in dance calls, but colleges aren’t looking for Broadway stars. They’re looking for young talent to nurture and grow. Rather than showing simply how talented you are, show your willingness to try and to learn. In my audition for CCM, we had a dance call to a song from Thoroughly Modern Millie. I walked in literally shaking, feeling incompetent to the others surrounding me (in my mind they radiated a dancer vibe) but I told myself to shut up and just. Do. It. It ended up being my best audition. Although I wasn’t accepted to the program, I left without regrets and still have none.
College auditions are great — it makes the idea of college even more appealing. After my experience, I can’t wait to make the transition and start building the base for my future.